The Self-Cleaning Shirt

One of man's greatest advances was the invention of the washing machine. From winding super-heavy mangles, to simply selecting cycle C, then standing back and admiring for an hour or so: it changed our lives. Now a start-up firm is threatening to take it to the next level.

A Kickstarter project founded by Aamir Patel has invented Silic - the world's first shirt which doesn't need to be cleaned. It achieves this by employing hydrophobic nanotechnology; or, specifically, the fabric is layered with billions of silica particles, forming a microscopic layer of air between the shirt and any advancing liquid molecules. Thus, they simply bounce off. Plus, as the environment is water-free, no bacteria can live there, so no nasty odours to deal with.

And for those worried that this is simply science over style, they have enlisted a former Vera Wang design to make the garments look as cool as possible.

The Kickstarter has already raised four times the amount they were aiming for, so the product will surely be on the market very soon.

For more information, check out their page, and watch the video below.

Somewhere out there, the CEO of Hotpoint is quietly shaking with fear.